Listening to Swamp's new album "No Answer in the Wind", when I first read the cover, I thought it was an album of Secret Backyard (Fog).
As one of the oldest and still active bands in Guangzhou, this year marks the 25th year of the swamp. Marsh first used British rock/psychedelic rock as the base point to create a sticky southern independent rock sound, "Panic" and "Early Morning" are regarded as the former Guangzhou underground association national anthem, and the degree of singing is very high. In the year of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, the Guangzhou independent music circle released a compilation album covering each other, when I was still in the secret backyard, making a folk version of "Early Morning", I still remember the night of the recording, all night at Uncle Li's house, with Park (also the swamp's later royal sound recordist, now the owner of the small space) recorded the sound, after finishing downstairs it was really "early morning".
Starting from "The Boat of Longing" to "The Wave Star", Marsh broke through the barriers of rock music at the last moment of the first decade of the 21st century, boldly created the genre of "guqin rock", and handed over works such as "1911" and "Qin Night" with a strong sense of conceptual and repertoire design. Partnering with Lou Ye on "Floating City Mysteries" is a battle for their status upgrade, and it is also a mutual achievement of Swamp and Lou Ye.
In fact, in "Qin Night", the exploration of swamp on guqin rock can be said to be an end. Whether it is the fusion of playing method and timbre between guqin and band sound, or Hailiang's transformation of the electric guqin, the swamp in "Qin Night" has reached a realm of clear piano heart. "Qin Night" is the highest peak in that stage of the swamp in my opinion,
I also specially wrote an article by Rory, the title of which is taken from a sentence said by Hailiang, "Although this is not the obligation of the piano, it is the freedom of the piano."
Unexpectedly, the swamp did not stop. In 2021's "Summer Worm Ice", I have heard that Swamp is eager to further break the band's paradigm. By the release of this album "No Answers" in 2023, I can feel that the band has once again taken a big step forward, and once again, the swamp leads to another unknown place. In my opinion, this time the swamp has changed no less than from psychedelic rock to guqin rock.
When we go back more than a decade and when Marsh first tried to use the guqin as the backbone instrument of the entire band, this approach was quite radical. The guqin is the most "Chinese" musical instrument. It has no frets and no pillars, and can wander freely on the piano surface, which makes the guqin have the biggest difference from other musical instruments - the greatest freedom. Therefore, the guqin itself is also the same as the Chinese literati landscape painting, especially "literati", and the pursuit of artistic conception and style has also become the biggest feature of this instrument. At that time, the swamp used the guqin as the main music of instrumental rock, on the one hand, combined with the overtone processing of the reverberation of the guqin itself (especially after the mutual blessing of the electric guitar in the sliding guitar, infinite sustain and other effects), on the other hand, it is also a unique pathos temperament that the swamp band has had since its inception, and we always feel that listening to the music of the swamp is particularly "bitter", which is also the truth.
However, guqin rock has its limitations after all. Although Hailiang wrote many years ago to interpret the guqin in his mind, showing his free heart. However, the essence of the guqin is not intended to be used as a solo/riff, and the freedom of the guqin and the framework design of the band are still in conflict. Even if you don't usually see this conflict, just like when you play video games or in Truman's World, you will always reach the invisible wall as you walk.
In short, if you want to use "back rock" and "instrumental rock" to define, then the ceiling of the electric guqin may be here.
Of course, the swamp knows this better than outsiders.
So what Swamp is doing is simply breaking the inherent structure of the original band. Since "Summer Bug Ice", Swamp has gradually "deviated" from the definition of a traditional rock band (coincidentally, another post-rocking band, which began to experiment a few years ago). Their work is more cinematic and OST, not in a pejorative sense, meaning that swampy music is reduced to a functional background, but they are indeed breaking the logic of band creation and continuing to go further towards the "avenue" and "freedom" they are looking for.
In "Drifting in the Wind Without Answers", "Ask the Wind" is an intro, and "Sa" is a more familiar pattern for Post-Rock fans, the kind of advancement of the jibe drum, well, let the answer float in the wind for a while. In "Sa", Hai Liang moves his bow, the logic is still extended from their "contention", you can also understand it as a piano concerto in Western classical music, the pianist has to use his own strength to compete with the orchestra, because Alai, Haixun, and Xiaohui did not let him. After this very classic swamp paradigm work, starting with "Two-Dimensional Turning Point", I think the brilliance of this album starts here.
Literally, "Drifting in the Wind Without Answers" can be roughly understood as a painter painted by literati, in the hunting wind, has some feelings, the wind ("Sa") felt in nature, two-dimensionalized, painted in his own picture scroll, after "Two Dimensional Turning Point" is the world in the picture scroll, is the wind in the painter's chest. From this tune, the swamps began their "capitalization". The orchestra is particular about the sparks that pop up when they play at the same time, and playing at the same time is a must. But in the logic of de-orchestration, we are not eating AA system, and the rent of the rehearsal room must be shared equally, so the passages of everyone who appears in the song must also be shared equally. Just like in "Two-Dimensional Turning Point", I heard that all the members of the swamp switched from "orchestra-centric" to "work-centric" with this kind of film-based writing logic. In quite a few passages, maybe Xiaohui has nothing to do - ah no, maybe Xiaohui is hiding behind a Pad-like sound, so what's the matter?
Therefore, in "One Parting", we hear Hailiang's flute become the protagonist of emotions; In "The Wind Knows Me", in fact, the percussion in the middle of Heison is the brightest part. It's interesting, if in the traditional concept, "wind" must be blowing music, those "super blowing" techniques, those long coda, but using percussion directly to convey people's hearts and feelings, this is quite a Chinese literati freehand practice. "The Birds Are Not Real" is what I think is the most groundbreaking work of this swamp. I'm not just referring to breakthroughs that Hailiang has become a ventriloquist and whistles to simulate the sounds of birdsong. If you understand the process of Chinese landscape painting/literati painting, you can probably hear that the front part of the album can be regarded as using ink lines to outline the general outline, and here, you start to paint some distant parts. Here, the fine electric guitar is like "rubbing", constantly using brushstrokes to increase the ambiguity of the mountain stone; Haisun's percussion is like "dotting moss", increasing the level of the picture, adding a little tree here and vegetation there; At this time, the guqin, in addition to simulating birdsong, also has many traditional playing skills, especially in the second half of "Birds Are Not Real", and then back to the design of the acoustic guitar, this kind of transformation of sunshine and yang in the mountains, from the technique and artistic conception are a very complete solution.
Most of the above is from the technical level. But for the swamp, they always have a sense of simplicity that comes from sadness, especially the changes in the heart of the album condensed, whether it is the big time or the personal encounters of the band members, which also makes this album have the kind of low sense of "boundless falling wood". Remembering that Lin Shengxiang released their latest album "Jianghu Kafka" last year, in an interview with Ma Shifang's "Music 543", Shengxiang, Zhong Yongfeng and Ma Fang all emitted a sense of "middle-aged ruin", and also described this album as writing about the situation of middle-aged people "physically and mentally ruined to a certain extent". Thinking that Shengxiang is now famous with film soundtracks, it is no longer the "dark" moments such as having to borrow money to live in debt, coupled with the premature birth of his daughter, but he feels this way, and knows that he is not moaning without disease, but has to face these conditions. "No Answer: Drifting in the Wind" can also be seen as the writing of "self-ruin" by the swamp group of middle-aged people. It is impossible to lie flat, and in every return to fate, in those inactive and promising struggles, it does not matter whether there is an answer at all. The freehand painting of the swamp for the midfield of his life, the strength to be able to make, is enough.